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Reading-simin saatian
Reading The ability to read in a second language (L2) is considered to be an essential skill for academic students and it represents the primary way for independent language learning (Carrell and Grabe 2002). '''* Approaches to learning and teaching reading''' three approaches to language learning described in Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor (this volume), namely those of the environmentalist, the innatist and the interactionist approaches. 1- Reading within an environmentalist approach Up to the end of the 1960s the field of language learning was dominated byenvironmentalist ideas that avoided speculation about the workings of thehuman mind and concentrated only on observable facts outside the person.Moreover, modeling and practicing the correct structures time after timewere paramount (see Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor this volume). Under suchan influence, reading was viewed primarily as a passive, perceptual process.Readers were decoders of symbols printed on a page and they translatedthese symbols into the corresponding word sounds before they couldconstruct the author’s intended meaning from them (Carrell, Devine, andEskey 1988). 2- Reading within an innatist approach The early view of reading as a passive, perceptual process was first challenged by the 1960s by Chomsky (1957, 1965) with his theory of language and language development which undermined the behaviourists’ models of language learning that prevailed throughout the 1950s. Chomsky’s (1957, 1965) theory of language provided the basis for the innatist theory of language learning (see Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor this volume), which claims that children are born with a predisposition to language acquisition. 3- Reading within an interactionist approach By the late 1970s researchers were attempting to identify comprehension skills. This significant change, though, grew out of the interactionist approach to language learning (see Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor this volume) and, particularly, from the work carried out essentially in the disciplines of cognitive psychology and sociolinguistics. consequence from the sociolinguistics view of reading was that it highlighted the vital role that institutions and the sociocultural environment play in the reading act. Contributions from the disciplines of cognitive psychology and sociolinguistics were extremely useful in helping both researchers and practitioners to view the process of reading as a dynamic, constructive and contextualized process through which individuals make meaning. The major pedagogical implications from such a view of reading were twofold. On the one hand, teachers should move away from what learners do not know about the text and place emphasis on what they do know about it.On the other hand, different text interpretations should be accepted and welcomed in the classroom. ''' * Teaching reading within a communicative competence framework''' Communicative approaches to L2 language teaching have evolved over the past two decades. A strong background influence is associated with the work of Hymes (1971), who was the first to argue that Chomsky’s (1965) competence-performance dichotomy did not include any reference to aspects of language use in social practice. Hymes (1971) was the first to point out that what was needed was a characterization of not just how language is structured internally but also an explanation of language behavior for given communicative goals. Therefore, he proposed the notion of ''communicativecompetence, ''which included both grammatical competence as well as therules of language use in social context and the norms of appropriacy. '''* Conclusion''' Once considered as a mere decoding process, reading is now seen as an interactive, constructive and contextualized process through which individuals make meaning (Usó-Juan 2006). Such a view of reading implies that linguistic, psychological and sociocultural factors play a key role in the reading process. Teachers and educators should teach the process of L2 reading as 1) a product based upon linguistic, psychological and sociocultural factors, including different purposes for reading; 2) as a meaning-construction process and, as such, accept different text interpretations; and 3) as a process in which the sociocultural environment and purposes for reading shift its pragmatic rules. In teaching in this way, they would facilitate learners’ task of becoming aware that reading is a communicative event. ''' '''